School of Earth and Environment

Anne Tallontire Dr Anne Tallontire

Senior Lecturer: Business, Environment & Corporate Responsibility; Director of Student Education

Telephone number: +44(0) 113 34 36469
Email address: a.m.tallontire@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 8.105a

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Business, Environment and Corporate Responsibility. I have a background in international development and now specialise in specialist on corporate social responsibility with respect to development, particularly in the context of global value chains and the use of private standards, including fair trade and ethical trade.

Qualifications

BA (1st class honours) Economics, Politics with North American Studies, University of Leeds, 1991

M.A (Distinction) Development Studies, University of Leeds, 1993

PhD, Development and Project Planning Centre, University of Bradford, 1999

Memberships/Fellowships

I am a member of the Development Studies Association and an active member of the study group on Business and Development.

Research Interests

I have over 15 years’ experience in development research. I was Principal Investigator for an ESRC-DFID research project - The Governance Implications of Private Standards Initiatives (2007-2010)

I am an active member of the following groups in the Sustainability Research Institute:

Across the University, I am involved in the following research centres:

My most recent papers focus on institutional dimensions of Global Value Chains, the process standard development and associated narratives.

I have extensive research and consultancy experience having worked on projects for a variety of national and international clients, including UK Department for International Development, Department for Food and Rural Affairs, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, Foreign Investment Advisory Service of the World Bank, Ethical Trading Initiative, United Nations Common Fund for Commodities, Food and Agriculture Organization, Hivos. This has involved field work in a number of African countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Sudan and South Africa.

My work has largely been in the context of food and agriculture, but has extended to jewellery and handicrafts, covering issues such as:

  • How corporate responsibility has benefited poor people particularly in developing countries, including the gender implications of tools for corporate responsibility such as codes of practice;
  • Whether corporate responsibility can benefit poor people in developing countries;
  • How corporate responsibility standards can work better in the interests of poor people, including different strategies for fair trade and their implications for people in developing countries;
  • Trade policy aspects of private standards;
  • The application of value chain analysis to corporate responsibility and private standards;
  • The wider developmental and institutional implications of corporate responsibility

Prior to joining the University of Leeds I was a Research Fellow at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich where I managed the Natural Resources and Ethical Trade programme, established in 1997 as the first body focused on the promotion and investigation of social and environmental dimensions in trade from the perspective of developing countries and poor people. I began working in this field by studying for a PhD on fair trade on coffee, focusing on the link between European fair trade organisations and a coffee co-operative in Tanzania.

Teaching Interests

I am currently Director of Student Education for the School and contribute to the following programmes:

Project details

Project title

Completed PhDs

  • Mina Said Allsopp: "Female Empowerment Within Global Value Chains: A Study of the Dynamics of Employment within Kenyan Export Industries"

I am currently supervising the following postgraduate researchers:

  • Adrian Fenton: "Climate change adaptation and microfinance: A potential win-win scenario?"
  • Rowshan Hannan: "Reducing poverty through co-operative enterprises"
  • Liz Morgan: "Ways of framing climate change to drive material scale mitigation and adaptation strategies of large consumer-facing businesses"
  • Rebecca Howard: Carbon standards and carbon projects: enquiries for participation, equity and justice in mitigation and development processes
  • Laura Smith: How can peace research contribute to thinking about CSR and development and in what ways can approaches to CSR deliver sustainability in extractive contexts in the global south?
  • Betty Chinyamunyamu The Impact of Government Interventions in Agriculture on Women Farmers: The Case of the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP)

Publications

  • Tallontire A; Opondo M; Nelson V; Martin A (2011) Beyond the vertical? Using value chains and governance as a framework to analyse private standards initiatives in agri-food chains, AGR HUM VALUES, 28, pp.427-441. doi: 10.1007/s10460-009-9237-2
  • Tallontire A (2009) Fair Trade Coffee. The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice, J INT DEV, 21, pp.718-720.
  • Tallontire A (2009) Top heavy? Governance issues and policy decisions for the fair trade movement, Journal of International Development, 21, pp.1004-1014. doi: 10.1002/jid.1636
  • Edward P; Tallontire A (2009) Business and development - Towards re-politicisation, Journal of International Development, 21, pp.819-833. doi: 10.1002/jid.1614
  • Tallontire A (2009) Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability and Survival, Berkeley, J INT DEV, 21, pp.718-720.
  • Tallontire A (2007) CSR and regulation: towards a framework for understanding private standards initiatives in the agri-food chain, THIRD WORLD Q, 28, pp.775-791. doi: 10.1080/01436590701336648
  • Tallontire A (2007) Trading down: Africa, value chains and the global economy, J MOD AFR STUD, 45, pp.178-179. doi: 10.1017/S0022278X06262426
  • Tallontire A; Dolan C; Smith S; Barrientos S (2007) Reaching the Marginalised? Gender, Value Chains and Ethical Trade in African Horticulture, Development in Practice, 15, pp.559-571. doi: 10.1080/09614520500075771
  • Tallontire A (2006) The origins of alternative trade and fairtrade - moving into the mainstream, In: Barrientos S; Dolan C (Ed) Ethical Sourcing in the Global Food Chain: Challenges and Opportunities, London: Earthscan.
  • Barrientos S; Dolan C; Tallontire A (2003) A gendered value chain approach to codes of conduct in African horticulture, WORLD DEV, 31, pp.1511-1526. doi: 10.1016/S0305-750X(03)00110-4
  • Tallontire A (2002) Challenges Facing Fair Trade and Ethical Sourcing: Which Way Now?, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, pp.12-24.
  • Nelson V; Tallontire A; Collinson C (2002) Assessing the benefits of ethical trade schemes for forest dependent people: comparative experience from Peru and Ecuador, INT FOR REV, 4, pp.99-109.
  • Tallontire AM; Nelson VJ; Opondo M; Martin A (Not yet published) Pathways of transformation or transgression? Power relations, ethical space and labour rights in Kenyan cut flower value chains, In: Goodman M; Sage C (Ed) Food Transgressions: Making Sense of Contemporary Food Politics, Ashgate.